A COUNCIL'S building service - holder of three Government charter marks for excellence - has been rated only fair by an auditors' inspection.

Durham City Council spent £5.8m on its service in the past financial year, all but £200,000 of which was spent on council house maintenance.

Charter marks are awards given by the Cabinet Office, after independent inspection, for excellence but the Audit Commission's housing inspectorate gave the service only one star.

Ratings range from zero for the worst to three for the most outstanding.

The inspectors said some aspects of the service - adaptations and gas servicing - performed well, but found weaknesses, including 16 per cent of urgent repairs not being completed on time.

The report said: "This leaves considerable scope for improvement, given that the best performing councils exceed 95 per cent."

The inspectors said Durham was in the bottom 25 per cent of district councils for the time taken to re-let houses, "representing a rent loss of about £500,000 in cash terms".

It said: "Too many unnecessary pre-inspections are carried out before work is done, adding to the cost and timescales involved in many repair jobs."

Strengths of the service included well-maintained estates, surveys indicating tenant satisfaction, a clearly explained repair reporting procedure, helpful staff, and clean and pleasant housing offices with good disabled access.

Recommendations for improvement included ensuring that "tenants and elected members are actively involved in the development and delivery of the service and in setting improvement targets".

The inspectors, who said the service had "uncertain" prospects for improvement, also said pre-repair inspections should be reduced but those after work was done should be increased "to encourage a higher standard of workmanship".

David Marrs, director of community services, said: "In less than two years, building services has undergone a major restructure. It now holds three charter marks, the Government's top award for customer service.

"The Audit Commission report recognises this and gives us a direction to continue to achieve significant results in the future.

"It also recognises the input of our customers through the stakeholders group, which is key to our approach of encouraging ownership by local people of policies which affect their lives.